“I’m sorry, Mattie. I shouldn’t have kept you outside so long without a coat.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I got a little chill but I’ll shake it off in a minute.”
“Dinner will be ready soon,” he says as we enter the kitchen. “That should warm you up, but you can use this in the meantime.” He grabs a heavy flannel shirt off a hook by the door and drapes it over my shoulders. I thank him and pull it close, catching a whiff of a scent from it that is distinctly Hurley, something spicy, masculine, and a little bit dangerous. It sends my hormones into overdrive and suddenly I’m not the least bit cold anymore.
“I’d like to wash up before we eat. Where’s your bathroom?”
Hurley directs me to a room at the top of the stairs and leaves me to find my way while he checks the lasagna in the oven.
The bathroom, which is done in blue and white tile with a hexagon tile floor, is small but sparkling clean, a surprising find in a bachelor pad. At first I fear it is too clean, but I finally find what I want when I snoop inside the medicine cabinet. There on the bottom shelf is a hairbrush. I remove the folded paper from my pocket and take the earrings out of it, dumping them loose into my other pocket. Then I carefully remove several hairs from the brush, place them on the paper, and fold it back up. After slipping it back into the pocket it came from, I flush the toilet, wash my hands, and head back to the kitchen.
I settle into the same chair I had before, just as Hurley sets a bubbling, delicious-smelling pan of lasagna on the table. A basket full of garlic bread is beside my plate and the heady aromas make me feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven. I’m practically drooling as Hurley cuts a generous square of lasagna from the pan and sets it on my plate. But just as I pick up my fork, my cell phone rings. I curse under my breath when I see that the caller ID says it’s Izzy, which most likely means work for me.
“Hello, Izzy,” I answer. “What’s up?”
“There’s been a death over at the hospital in the ER. EMS brought in an elderly gentleman with a cardiac history as a PNB.”
PNB is medical speak for a pulseless nonbreather, meaning the patient was already dead when EMS found him. And given that he’s now my patient, it’s safe to assume that the efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
“It sounds like your basic coronary,” Izzy goes on, “but we still need to examine the patient, review the chart, and obtain a history. It should be pretty straightforward, and given your nursing background, I think it will be a good one for you to do for your first solo. Are you up for it?”
The delicious smells of garlic, mozzarella, and tomato sauce are making my stomach rumble, which makes me want to tell Izzy no. But I owe him on many levels, not the least of which is his giving me this job when I so desperately needed it.
“Sure,” I tell him.
“Fabulous,” Izzy says, and I can’t help but smile at his choice of words. Even though he is openly gay, Izzy doesn’t broadcast his proclivities much. But every once in a while he does or says something that screams gay to me. The way he says the word fabulous is one of those things. “How soon can you be there?”
“I’ll head over now,” I say, looking longingly first at the lasagna, then Hurley.
“Call me if you have any questions.”
“Will do.”
I end the call and give Hurley a woeful look. “I have to head over to the hospital to look into a death they had in the ER.”
I’m hoping he’ll look disappointed, or at the least, chagrined, but instead he looks contentedly resigned and says, “I understand. It’s part of the job. We can have dinner some other time.”
Easy for him to say. It seems like every time we try to get together in a nonwork-related way, somebody dies. I feel like I’m trying to date the Grim Reaper. And to make matters worse, I detect a distinct lack of conviction in Hurley’s voice that makes me nervous.
I scarf down two quick bites of the lasagna, which tastes utterly divine, and then take a bite of garlic bread. When I’ve swallowed I tell him, “This is heaven. You’re a very good cook.”
He beams at me. “Thanks. How about I fix you a little to-go container and you can take some of it with you?”
“That would be fabulous,” I tell him, echoing Izzy. I watch as he quickly packs up a meal of lasagna and garlic bread in a plastic container, giving it, some napkins, and a fork to me when he’s done. It’s a sweetly domestic scene and it’s easy for me to imagine a lifetime of such moments with him. It fortifies my faith in the future of our relationship . . . until I remember that he’s been implicated in a nasty murder and solicited my cooperation with a secret investigation.
“Thanks,” I say, carrying my food out to the foyer and setting it on the lowest step of the staircase. He retrieves my coat from the closet while I take off the shirt he gave me and drape it over the newel post. Then he holds the coat for me so I can slip it on. After he settles it onto my shoulders, he turns me around to face him. Our eyes lock for a pregnant pause and I brace myself for the kiss I hope is coming.
Except it doesn’t. All he does is smile and say, “Thanks for everything.”
He hands me my to-go container and steers me out the door. I stumble off the porch in a state of mind-numbing confusion, climb into the hearse, and pull away.
As I head for the hospital, my mind scrambles to make sense of this change in Hurley’s behavior. Damn men anyway! On the one hand they can be so easy to read. Speak to the small brain and they’ll say or do anything. But their big brains function so differently from women’s that it’s like dealing with someone from another planet, maybe even another whole solar system.
The hell with him, I decide. Screw him, David, and all the other men in the world who possess the ability to manipulate my hormones and complicate my life. I mean really, why do I need a man in my life anyway? To fix things around the house? Clearly not, since David is about as inept at those things as a man could be and I can always hire a handyman. For sex? Well, that part is nice but there are plenty of other ways to find satisfaction, maybe even the aforesaid handyman. Children? Thanks to sperm banks and recent advances in modern reproductive science, I don’t need a man for that either.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that I’m on to something. The whole idea of giving up men is oddly liberating; it makes me feel giddy and determined. By the time I reach the hospital, I’ve made up my mind. It’s time to reevaluate my life, reexamine my goals, and focus on myself without any men in the picture. I am Mattie renewed, version two-point-oh, the latest and greatest release.
After parking the hearse, I open my to-go container and chomp down on a slice of buttery garlic bread. The delicious mix of soft, yeasty, still-warm bread, tangy garlic, and fresh butter is enough to make my toes curl with delight.
Damn, but Hurley can cook! Maybe it’s too soon to give up on him altogether. I mean we have shared a few kisses that were hot enough to be a threat to global warming, and it was me he kept asking for when he was drugged up in the hospital. Surely all that meant something, didn’t it?
I realize how desperately I want to believe in Hurley—to believe in me and Hurley—and already I’m rethinking my antiman dogma.
Way to go, Mattie, I mumble aloud. It took you, what, all of two minutes to fall off your fanatical feminist pedestal?
But I can’t help myself. The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that Hurley feels something for me. The question is what? I’m pretty certain he feels some level of attraction, but is it enough? Did I scare him away? Given his current situation, is it possible he’s just leading me on? Stringing me along to make me a happy follower so he can further his own agenda?